The chances are real,
real as rain.
But chance is no answer,
does not fly
easy in the low grey sky,
unlike the Canada geese
of our private thinking
at home on lake or lawn.

2.
I’m trying to tell about
the sound of thinking,
raindrops, said one philosophe,
and another a piece by Schumann.
But most ignore
the noise of cogitation,
care only for the hen-tracks
left on the innocent blank page.

3.
More bird behavior.
The hawks of Wyoming,
Laramie country, summer snow,
we have our own eagles,
gladly, but we have a river
to keep them bright,
skimming from the west,
nesting near our lives.

4.
Back then I studied the mountain,
dull ornithologist, I need
something that doesn’t fly away,
I need to know
who does the thinking in my head
(if that’s where it is)
and who she is, or he, or they,
pick your favorite pronoun
and tell me, who, and what they
want, and from what country
do they come, flying silently
through my personal night.
And when they’re here
they speak, and everybody
thinks it’s me, because I hear
the sounds they make and try,
even now, to make
words of what they say.

5.
Now this owl-craft
some men call thinking,
There is a gender issue here,
earth and sky. Memory and desire.

6.
I like Aquinas.
He was fat and made
tough guesses into songs
some church still sings.
Tantum ergo we mumbled,
intricate argument
simple chant. Now sing,
right now, what I am thinking.

7.
By turning our bodies
into arguments
set to music we
begin to discern
the way to venerate.
I think all by itself
veneration is enough.

8.
Back to Wyoming—
the pronghorns
leaping like haiku
out of quick prairie.
But is that country really
what it looks like
to people in cars
going by at eighty on the Interstate?
Or is it a show they put on for us,
antelopes and mountains
pressing quick or slow
until we’re gone
then they go back to thinking.

9.
There, that’s what the word means.
Being conscious of being there.
Here. All the rest is
raindrops on the page.

10.
This dialogue with no one
is almost complete.
All it needs now is meaning.
That’s where you come in.

                            7 August 2020